[Shotwell] Contributing to Yorba/Shotwell

[David Velazquez]

Please, pardon me if this seems too long, too much like a rant, or just the
wrong place for this. It's just something I've had in my head as of late.
I've sent it to this list only for the reason that this is the project I
would like to help out. Not everything in here applies to Yorba, however, I
felt it essential so people knew where I was coming from.

I've been an Ubuntu user on and off for a while now and I've always wanted
to actively contribute to an open source/free software project.
Unfortunately, most of the time the calls for help are for developers or
translators. Unfortunately, I know no other languages and am therefore quite
useless on both fronts. I do, however, enjoy writing (as will be evident by
the time I'm done here). For this reason I feel like I could help out
projects with documentation efforts. Even if most users will never read the
documentation provided it always seems to make the project look more
polished and professional. Usually when it gets right down to it I get put
off by one thing or another though, the most common of which seems to be how
to make that leap from spectator and user to contributor.

Often it seems open source projects are spread out on many different sites
from Launchpad to Trac to personal websites and a mixture of all three.
This, coupled with what at first glance seems like a closed off community,
can present an insurmountable hurdle to the prospective volunteer. In my
personal experience I see opportunities for assistance, but no clear cut way
of getting information on where to begin, what to do, or a way of
collaborating with others so work is not done and redone. Trac might work
well for developers, but it leaves the lowly folk like me out in the dark.
Wanting to contribute but not knowing how. Shotwells' own page welcomes
contributions in the form of artwork, documentation, and more, but to the
common reader leaves no other information in the form of how to get started,
what needs working on, or any other information.

I'm not sure what I'm requesting here, other than a more defined path for
people like me who wish to contribute but might not know where to get
started or what to get started on. In a broader sense a place for people
like me to find tasks that can be done and collaborate on them until they
reach that goal is what comes to mind. A volunteers center of sorts.

I believe there are many others like me who would love to help out their
favorite project, but due to the very nature of such software they would
like to help out find it difficult to do so. Centralizing software (which
Yorba has so nicely done!), laying out defined and specific things which
need doing (for us non-developers), and providing a strong starting point
with information on how to get started and where to go for help should all
serve to increase the (long term) amount of volunteers software like this
receives.

In short, it's tough to dive head first in and help out wherever help is
needed. I'm here and would love to contribute to any of Yorbas projects with
documentation (since this is about all I can do) if I only knew where to
start.

Dave